Is there something in the water supply in Arizona?

Or are people there just being taught to be racist dingbats?
Apparently an elementary school in Prescott, Az., allowed the students to vote on what kind of mural they would like to decorate the school with and the kids chose a painting of themselves. Professional artists were called in and worked with the kids to create a mural on the exterior of the school that portrayed the students attending the institution. The problem, apparently, is that some of the students have the temerity to not be white! And so local knuckledraggers, encouraged by (surprise, surprise, surprise!) a local radio talk show host and city councilman, took to driving by and shouting racist epithets at the school and the kids working on the mural.
So in response the principal organized groups of kids to shower the cars of the racist fuckknuckles with bricks and molotov cocktails as they drove by ordered the skin tones of the African American and Latino kids in the mural to be lightened. Nice example to set, Captain Courageous.

On the plus side, now that this story has hit the national press, the radio host, city councilman Steve Blair, has been fired from the radio station. However, he is still a member of the city council and a giant racist douche bag.

Just listen to him in this brief interview in which he is given every chance to backpeddle or reconsider being a racist douche bag and yet, still insists on there is nothing wrong with his actions and that his encouraging people to terrorize a bunch of third graders is all about "freedom."




Big tip of the hat to Cliff at Rusty Idols

crossposted from the Woodshed

Assault rifle at Obama speech a publicity stunt

for conservative talk radio show Declare Your Independence With Ernest Hancock.
Hancock and "Chris", the black man carrying the assault rifle, knew each other "through their work for presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)".

"We know what we're up against," Hancock, also packing heat at the health care rally, told CNN. "We're up against a tyrannical government that will rob the next generation as long as they can get away with it."

Just a couple of guys conducting a radio interview while cradling an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle at a health care rally where the President of the United States was speaking.
This is not really about healthcare then, is it?
From the "interview" :

"Is it your advocacy that by having guns here we're probably all safer?" Hancock asked.
Chris "absolutely" agreed. He then went on to explain how he was always armed, even when riding his motorcycle, though not always when he showered: "Sometimes when I take a shower I set it down on the sink."

Only sometimes. Presumably other times not. Banking with an assault rifle must be interesting.

Initial news reports included the information that the Arizona police who monitored the man at the downtown protest "wanted to make sure no one decided to harm him."
Now we hear from Hancock's interview on CNN:

"It was Thursday that I called and talked to Al Ramirez, the representative from the Phoenix police department, and we were discussing -- we've been around this rhetoric that was building up around William Kostric, who did this in New Hampshire."

These stunts at health care rallies, whether with or without the guns, were never about health care.

Civil Cold War turning hot?

The recent shooting in a Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church is a tragic event and as distasteful as it is to use a tragedy to make a political point, there is no escaping the facts in this case:

Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still requested the search warrant after interviewing Adkisson. who was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation.

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."...Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The
O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

It was a politically driven murder, in that the man who committed the crime specifically targeted the church and its congregation because of their politics. I wonder why.


"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
-Ann Coulter, August 26, 2002

"I'd hang every lawyer that went down to Guantanamo"
-Michael Savage, June 19, 2008

"In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he "did it," even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate. "
-Ann Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, 1998

The definitive list is here (Special thanks to David Neiwert, who has been shining a light on this kind of rhetoric for years)

I'm not saying that everyone who reads a book by Sean Hannity is a potential mass murderer or that watching Bill O'Reilly leads ignorant alcoholics to try to gun down liberals any more than video games cause school shootings. What I am saying is that the constant eliminationist rhetoric of the right does push some people in that direction. I'm not advocating censorship, I'm advocating responsible speech. I love passionate invective as much as the next guy, but when you start seriously advocating killing people on a radio broadcast or a television show, you've crossed a very serious threshold and ought to be held responsible in a court of law.

crossposted from the Woodshed